Thursday, October 25, 2012

The most innovative tech companies today are building work cultures that fly in the face of tradition.

At companies like Valve and Github, gone are the managers who boss people around and expect servile compliance. In their place is a flat organizational structure where individuals manage themselves and each other to build awesome things through peer management. These are companies without bosses.

Savile, like all paedophiles, was interested only in people who had no power to resist or complain, unlikely to cause trouble.

Yes, I know it’s a common enough term. But accuracy in such things is important I feel.

In research environments, specific terms are used for chronophilias: for instance, ephebophilia to refer to the sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescents,[1] hebephilia to refer to the sexual preference for earlier pubescent individuals, and pedophilia to refer to the sexual preference for prepubescent children.[5] However, the term pedophilia is commonly used to refer to any sexual interest in minors below the legal age of consent, regardless of their level of physical, mental, or psychological development.[6]

(...)

And it does seem that Savile was an ephebophile. Possibly on the verges of hebephilia but not, in that strict usage, a paedophile.

The truth is, ephebophilia in human males is normal even if societally repugnant.

Yes, I know you can say the same thing about murder: the murder rates of hunter gatherer societies make that one of the leading causes of death among males. Normal and societally repugnant.

Monday, October 15, 2012

"Despite the moving tributes that were paid to John Lennon’s lyrical vision of a world without war, racial or religious divisions or hunger at the conclusion of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, there’s really very little real talk of peace anymore.
You don’t hear much talk of peace from presidential candidates Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, both of whom are indebted to the $600 billion military industrial complex for their campaign dollars. It’s the same military industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his 1961 farewell address to the nation.
You don’t hear much about peace from the various talking heads whose mindless chatter keeps us distracted from the ongoing wars that are bleeding us dry (the Afghanistan war just marked its 11th anniversary on Oct. 7, 2012, making it the longest war in U.S. history)." (continua)

BRUCE Willis is preparing to take Apple to court over who owns his huge digital music collection after he dies.

The Die Hard actor, 57, wants to leave the haul to his daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah.

But under iTunes' current terms and conditions, customers essentially only 'borrow' tracks rather than owning them outright.

So any music library amassed like that would be worthless when the owner dies.

Willis has asked advisers to set up a trust that holds his downloads, which reportedly include classics from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin, to get around this rule.

The action star is also backing legal moves to increase the rights of downloaders.

Apple can freeze users’ accounts if they suspect them of sharing tunes with others.

Chris Walton, an estate specialist at Irwin Mitchell, told a newspaper: “Lots of people will be surprised on learning all those tracks and books they have bought over the years don’t actually belong to them.

Many of us will accumulate vast libraries of digital books and music over the course of our lifetimes. But when we die, our collections of words and music may expire with us.

Someone who owned 10,000 hardcover books and the same number of vinyl records could bequeath them to descendants, but legal experts say passing on iTunes and Kindle libraries would be much more complicated.

Apple (US:AAPL) and Amazon.com (US:AMZN) grant “nontransferable” rights to use content, so if you buy the complete works of the Beatles on iTunes, you cannot give the “White Album” to your son and “Abbey Road” to your daughter.

There is apparently some discussion by estate lawyers to try to get around this problem by creating legal trusts that would be the owner of the online content, but I can’t see how that’s going to work. If, under the terms of your agreement with Amazon and Apple, the digital files are non-transferable, then I don’t see how an individual could transfer their digital content to the trust to begin with. From the perspective of Amazon and Apple, any agreement that tried to do that would be a legal nullity, and based on their respective terms of service, they would be right.

In reality, this is just another effect of the way that we treat copyrights and digital content under the law here in the United States. Technically, you’ve never actually owned any of the musical content on any of the media you’ve purchased, whether it’s a vinyl record, a compact disc, or a digital file. Before the digital era, though, you did own the physical medium on which the content was recorded. So, while you didn’t have the legal right to make copies of, say,that Led Zepplin album you bought in the 70′s, you did have the right to sell the physical record itself. The same rules applied to cassettes, 8-track tapes, and compact discs. Now, though, there is no physical medium to speak of that you can sell to a Used Records store, there’s just the digital content and the “no copying” rule still applies. Similarly, since a copyright holder has the right to set the terms of whatever license they grant to you when you purchase that digital file, they can set terms that say that what they are really selling you is the non-transferable right to possess a copy of the digital music file, not a property right in the music file itself. That’s why you cannot legally transfer it to your heirs when you die, because you never owned it to begin with.

Obviously, this is not a practical situation for the modern era. At some point, people are going to start realizing that they have less rights to their music than they used to and people will call for the laws to be changed. Of course, we’ve heard calls to change these laws many times in the past and they’ve mostly gone nowhere because the media companies and copyright holders have far more clout in Congress than ordinary Americans do and, for most people, this is an off-the-radar issue. So, the prospect for change isn’t very good unfortunate.

Here's the latest Tory idiocy. Dominic Raab says the "talented and hard-working have nothing to fear" from a scrapping of "excessive protections" for workers. (...)

Is Raab right that the best workers have nothing to fear?

No.It's easy to think of many ways in which talented and hard-working people might reasonably fear the sack. A middle-manager ordered to cut costs might prefer to sack better-paid workers. A soft-hearted one might prefer to sack the talented in the belief that they can more easily find work elsewhere. Or he might simply not be able to recognize talent, if it's outside his field; engineers can be bad at spotting financial ability, and vice versa. Or he might simply regard a good worker as a threat to his own position - possibly reasonably so, given that talented people have market power and so are hard to make profits from.

We know from the US - one of the few countries in the world with less job protection than the UK - that bosses can be petty tyrants who sack workers on flimsy pretexts.

Now, you might reply that if Raab is taking too optimistic a view of managers' decency and ability, I'm taking too pessimistic a one. But the point of laws is to protect us from the minority of wrong-doers. The vast majority of people are not thieves or murders - but this fact doesn't negate the need for laws against theft and murder.

There's something a bit weird about the way we normally do economics. Or maybe it's just the examples we normally use. My mind isn't quite clear on it yet. So I'm writing this blog post.

We usually talk about multiple inputs producing one output. Labour, land, and capital are inputs used to produce apples. Three inputs, and one output. We know that's a simplification. It's lots more than just three. There are lots of different types of labour, natural resources, and capital goods, and all combine together to produce one output good. Then we go on to talk about the degree of substitutibility between different inputs in the production function. At one extreme we have perfect substitutibility, so Y=AXa + BXb + CXc; and at the other extreme we have the fixed proportions, so Y = min{AXa , BXb , CXc}. In between we have imperfect substitutibility like Y=Xa^a.Xb^b.Xc^c.

Why isn't it the other way around? Why not one input producing multiple outputs?

Or at least, n inputs producing m outputs, where m could either be bigger or smaller than n?

Is it because that's just how the world usually is?

If you look at the whole economy, it is not at all obvious whether there are more inputs than outputs. It depends how you count them. Even if you look at a particular firm it's not always obvious. A farm produces (say) wheat, barley, and beans. But the barley could go for brewing if the weather is good and it is managed well, or for cattle feed if it isn't. And there are lots of different grades of brewing barley, all with different prices, depending on a long list of things.

We could talk about the degree of substitutibility between the different outputs in the production process. At one extreme the different outputs are perfect substitutes in production, so AYa + BYb + CYc = X; and at the other extreme we could have fixed proportions between the different outputs, so max{AYa , BYb , CYc} = X.

We even have a name for the production functions with fixed proportions of inputs; we call it the "Leontieff production function". Why don't we have a name for the production function with fixed proportions of outputs? (Or if we do have a name, how come I've never heard of it?).

Originating from Arab tribes in the region, the clans of Lebanon are considered to have a rich history, and whose bonds can never be broken. From the fifth century until the 18th, the clans were based between Tripoli and Beirut, and then subsequently moved to Lebanon's Bekaa region where they continue to reside.

Today's clans share an ancestor - the Hamadiyeh clan. Tracing down the generations from the Hamadiyeh, there are two main branches, the Chamas and the Zaaiter. Within the Zaaitar clan, there are the Meqdads, Haj Hassan, Noon, Shreif, and the Jaafar. Within the Chamas clan, there are the Allaw, Nassereddine, and Dandash.

According to Saadoun Hamadeh, author of The History of Shia in Lebanon, the country began with 80 or so tribes, which have now been whittled down to between 30 and 35. (...)

As-Safir journalist Saada Allaw - of the Allaw family - said the clans "don't count their family members in the conventional way".

"They say, for example, we are 15,000 rifles, which indicates how many people are willing and able to carry weapons." (...)

The Meqdads, who claim to have "10,000 able-bodied men", recently announced the "success" of their military wing's operation in response to the kidnapping of a family member in Syria. While they originate from the Bekaa, their presence is much more noticeable in Dahyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut.

Hussein "Abu Ali" Meqdad, a member of the Meqdad family, told Al Jazeera the armed wing of the clan consists of "1,500 bodies, and another 1,000 on stand-by". (...)

For Allaw, the term "military wing" is more of a media stunt. "Every clan has members who are willing and trained to take up arms if needs be, it is not a specialised 'wing'," she said. (...)

Author Hamadeh said that the clans "are the least attached to political parties, including Hezbollah and Amal". (...)

"They abide by certain rules that they themselves have created, and have their own judge to look over their feuds," he said. "The state does not get involved."

It was when Lebanese Shia started becoming the targets of sectarian tensions around 2005 that the clans reportedly began showing more compassion for Hezbollah and Amal.

"Today it is not unusual for one of the political parties to mediate a feud between the clans to prevent bloodshed," said Allaw.

Abu Ali was keen to point out that parties such as Hezbollah do not give orders to clans such as his. "We have our own organised hierarchy, and we do not accept orders from anyone, including Hezbollah," he said. "We control our own members."

My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’. (...)

The immediate starting point of this article was a letter I read in one of our Leftist weeklies. The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse. What he complained of was not the shutting up but the letting out. On his remedial view of punishment the offender should, of course, be detained until he was cured. And or course the official straighteners are the only people who can say when that is. The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it. Which of us, if he stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?

It may be said that by the continued use of the word punishment and the use of the verb ‘inflict’ I am misrepresenting Humanitarians. They are not punishing, not inflicting, only healing. But do not let us be deceived by a name. To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of ‘normality’ hatched in a Vienese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors hav succeeded or I grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success—who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious. Only enormous ill-desert could justify it; but ill-desert is the very conception which the Humanitarian theory has thrown overboard.

If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the new theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terrorem, make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a very wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example arose’ arose. You then, as the saying is, killed two birds with one stone; in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it.

But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on dessert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The deterrent effect demands that the public should draw the moral, ‘If we do such an act we shall suffer like that man.’ The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty. But every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial. When a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment (call it ‘cure’ if you prefer0 of an innocent victim, provided that the public can be cheated into thinking him will be so wicked. The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.

It is, indeed, important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

My first job after finishing my undergraduate degree in economics involved using Lotus 1-2-3 - the first "killer app" spreadsheet program - to create graphs. I'd never been taught to use a spreadsheet, but I worked it out.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Spreadsheets are ubiquitious in the workplace. When a new research assistant joins the Bank of Canada, their first job - like mine - is crunching data with a spreadsheet. Yet, at some universities, it is possible to graduate with an economics degree and never learn how to use Excel. (...)

Yet spreadsheets are used in so many applications that it is worth getting some basic knowledge of how they work. Spreadsheets, moreover, provide a crucial conceptual basis for linear algebra and econometrics. A matrix is basically a spreadsheet, a vector is basically a column, an observation is a row. Understanding data in the abstract is difficult, picturing it as a spreadsheet is far more straightforward.

So why aren't our students learning how to use spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets seem to be surrounded by a Someone Else's Problem field. High school teachers figure students will learn to use them in university; university professors assume students must have been taught to how use spreadsheets in high school. Theorists and people who teach field courses leave spreadsheet instruction to the business stats instructors - and business statistics profs sometimes do provide spreadsheet tutelage, especially those teaching in business schools. But not every student takes a spreadsheet oriented business stats course.

I don't think that economics degrees should be just like business degrees - I like the fact that economics has strong theoretical underpinnings, that conceptual understanding and rigor is emphasized. Yet at the same time, don't we have a responsibility to ensure that our students graduate with some basic office skills?